What is Q fever?
Q fever is a highly contagious zoonosis, that also has a negative impact on the health and reproductive performance of ruminants. Signs in cattle may include abortion, premature, still born or weak calves and infertility.
There is a varying prevalence reported in the UK and Ireland1,2,3,4 which includes 80% prevalence of positive Bulk Milk (BM) ELISA across 225 GB dairy herds and 70% BM PCR positive in South West England.
However, as the disease is mostly insidious and the diagnosis can be quite challenging, only a small percentage of farmers know that Q fever is present on their farms.
Learn more about this disease on our Q fever website.
Q fever heat map
Incidence of Q fever in UK dairy herd as diagnosed by Q Test (PCR)
- Total number of Q tests reported to 10 Oct 24: 651
- Number of tests by county range from 54 to 0
- National average 47% positive
- Recording of data commenced 2020
